Its most popular use is the development of desktop and enterprisedatabase applications, but as a general purpose development tool it is capable of and used for most types of development projects. It was one of the first of what came to be known as RAD tools, for Rapid Application Development, when released in 1995. Delphi 2, released a year later, supported 32-bit Windows environments, and a C++ version, C++Builder, followed a few years after. In 2001 a Linux version known as Kylix (a classical Greek urn) became available. With one new major release every year, in 2002, the product became known as Delphi 7 Studio, the language became known officially as Delphi instead of Object Pascal, and support for Linux (through Kylix) and .NET (through a preview compiler) were added. Full support for .NET is scheduled for the forthcoming Delphi 8.

The main components of Delphi and Kylix are the Delphi language (formally known as the Object Pascal language), the VCL/CLX (Visual Component Library), and strong database connectivity, combined with a powerful IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and additional support tools.

The remarkable features of the Delphi language include:

Transparent handling of objects as references/pointers

Properties as part of the language, that is member getters and setters which transparently encapsulate the access to member fields

Index Properties and Default Properties which provide access to collections in a comfortable and transparent way

Delegates aka type safe method pointers which are used to wire the events triggered by the components

Delegation of interface implementation to a field or property of the class

Easy implementation of Windows message handlers by tagging a method of a class with the number/name of the windows message to handle

Most of the features listed above were introduced in Delphi first and adapted in other languages later.

Free Pascal A commandline compiler substitute that aims source compability with the core feature set of both the Turbo Pascal and Delphi dialects. Features of Delphi versions beyond 4 are implemented only in the 1.9.x beta series (which will become the 2.0.x series in time). The beta's are very usable though. Operates on most x86 operating systems including Win32, Dos (with extender), Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OS/2 and Novell Netware. Supports some other OSes on m68k and PowerPC family, the status of which is still changing fast so not reproduced here. Work on SPARC and Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) has started.

GNU Pascal (Separately distributed part of the GNU Compiler Collection) While formally not aimed at the Borland dialects of Pascal, it does contain a Borland Pascal compability mode, and is slowly absorbing Delphi language features, though not yet directly suitable for recompiling large bodies of Delphi code. It is the most prolific compiler in terms of Operating Systems and processors though, and therefore deserves mentioning as a last resort.

There is a tool called Pocket Studio which aims to compile stripped down Delphi code to PDA's. The website was down at the time of writing this article, but I heard good comments about it.

Virtual Pascal is a x86 32-bit Turbo Pascal and Delphi compatible compiler mainly aimed at OS/2 and Windows, though it developed a DOS+Extender and an experimental Linux cross-compiler too. The compiler is stuck on the level of about Delphi V2, and the site hasn't changed significantly in two years though, but of the free alternatives, it is still the one with the best polished IDE and debugger though Free Pascal is getting nearer and nearer.

BloodShed distributes a very polished graphical Win32 editor (though not RAD) as a frontend for both GNU Pascal and Free Pascal.

Lazarus is an effort to build a RAD on top of Free Pascal. The internal classes hierarchy can base itself on several graphical toolkits. The main toolkits are GTK1 and Win32, and GTK2 has already come a long way. Occasionally people want QT and wxWindows, but nobody seems interested enough to implement it.

OpenSibyl is another effort to build a RAD on top of Free Pascal. However it is geared towards OS/2, and still in initial stages.

InnerFuse is a Delphi interpreter for embedding in applications. It is rumoured to work with several of the alternatives too.

WDOSX is a win32 api emulating DOS extender that can be used to get Delphi console applications running on plain DOS.\n

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